Lacking Seoul? Why South Korea’s thriving capital is having an identity crisis

From the confusing new slogan I.Seoul.U to the viral sensation of Gangnam Style an inside joke about the citys success that was lost on most foreign viewers Seoul is a city struggling to define its brand. But why?

In November 2015, a much-publicised process of crowdsourcing ideas and putting them to a vote culminated in the city of Seoul unveiling its current English-language slogan: I.Seoul.U. It met with more ridicule from the local English-speaking community than most of the South Korean capitals international PR moves (including, but hardly limited to, photoshopped versions for the long-suffering village of Fucking, Austria).

The arrogance, the vitriol and the self-appointed expertise evident in this explosion of online bile is extraordinary, wrote Korea Times columnist Andrew Salmon as he surveyed the announcements aftermath. He argued that the stark simplicity of I.Seoul.U may well speak to tourists hailing from these high-potential target markets who have on the whole, a poor command of English.

Furthermore, the unconventional, offbeat, and quirky strapline, as he described it, puts it alongside the Nike swoosh and legendary graphic designer Milton Glasers I NY both classic exercises in branding exerting abstract emotional appeal.

Indeed, I.Seoul.U was seen as a step forward in Seouls branding. Whatever its innate strengths or weaknesses, the slogan has brought more attention to a city that has long suffered image problems. For most of the 65 years since its emergence from the destruction of the Korean War, both Seoul and South Korea in general have struggled to define themselves on the cultural world stage, despite going on to become one of the most impressive economic success stories in human history.

The most relevant comparison in success is to the countrys neighbour and former coloniser Japan. In a period of about 30 years Japan moved out of its negative image to become one of the most admired countries in the world, in the words of place-branding consultant Simon Anholt.

Anholt believes impatience, a lack of objectivity, boring strategies, faulty leadership, a naive faith in the power of propaganda, and a desire for quick fixes and short cuts, are among the most common obstacles to proper nation branding; and for all the strengths of the country itself, South Korea still occasionally falls victim to these vices. Just last month it scrapped its English-language national brand Creative Korea, developed last year at a cost of $3m, amid accusations of a lack of creativity and, given Frances previous use of the brand Creative France, of plagiarism as well.

Japan may have a higher profile than South Korea, but not every branding scheme has been a work of genius. Around the same time as I.Seoul.U, the Japanese capital rolled out its own awkward quasi-English slogan & Tokyo. Yet whereas the nation of Japan and the city of Tokyo maintain two related but essentially independent public images, South Korea cant be discussed apart from Seoul quite so easily. Half of the entire countrys population lives in the 25 million-strong Seoul metropolitan area, and South Koreans from other regions have continued to regard Seoul as the only place affording real opportunity.

To a great extent, Seoul is Korea and Seouls image is Koreas. The country and the capital have developed in tandem, and the inextricability of those two processes lies at the heart of Korean architecture professor Jieheerah Yuns recent study Globalizing Seoul. Yun assesses the historically inward-looking citys efforts to turn outward, presenting itself no longer as an industrial hard city emphasising speed and efficiency, but as a soft city, one that values the appreciation of invisible things, such as cultural and emotional wellbeing prioritising aesthetics as well as economics.

In the past 15 years many urbanist-celebrated projects have popped up based on these rather abstract notions. There is Cheonggyecheon, a life-filled stream running through downtown Seoul where an elevated freeway once stood; the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), an unearthly metallic museum and shop complex designed by the late Zaha Hadid placed in the centre of a busy market neighbourhood; and most recently Seoullo 7017, an overpass turned urban park that has been compared with Manhattans High Line since opening in May.

Yet this publicity also provided a chance for the media to once again highlight the sources of Seouls inferiority complex: Built up quickly during the countrys astonishingly fast industrialisation, wrote the Washington Posts Anna Fifield, the city has often been derided with the saying, Theres no soul in Seoul.

The official branding work meant to counteract that image goes back a decade when the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design selected Seoul as its World Design Capital for 2010. The local government soon launched the Design Seoul campaign as an effort to elevate Seoul to the hub of the world design industry, thereby introducing the English termdesign into the mainstream Korean lexicon.

It has since turned into an all-encompassing catch phrase, according to Yun, or in the words of one member of activist artist collective FF Group: A master key that can be used for anything, including the justification of questionable or undemocratic policies.

Yun quotes architect and branding scholar Anna Klingmann, warning that these potentially short-lived images of dazzling signature projects produce a culture of the copy, imitating one another in their offerings and aesthetics. It remains to be seen whether the DDP, which opened in 2014, will ultimately attain international recognition an icon of Seoul.

In 2012, with the DDP still under construction, a very different cultural project had already turned into a global phenomenon, spreading an image of the city to every corner of the world: Gangnam Style. No official branding effort, however well-meaning or well-funded, could have hoped to reach as many people across the world as the singer-rapper Psys mesmerisingly odd music video which for years was the most viewed on Youtube.

Psys song and video satirises the boastful, free-spending, strenuously westernised and usually heavily indebted lifestyle associated with the capital in general, and Gangnam in particular an area that developed far later than north of the river Han.

When Gangnam Style exploded, the mighty Korean pop culture industry had been hard at work for almost 15 years. But the appeal of this so-called Korean wave of melodramatic TV and glossy music videos proved primarily aspirational, mostly washing over Koreas Asian neighbours and hardly lapping the shores of the west.

Busy grooming squadrons of humourless boy and girl groups as indistinguishable as the countrys high-rise apartment complexes, the corporate entities behind K-pop couldnt have predicted that the chunky, slightly over-the-hill Psy would be the one to break through to global superstardom.

By the same token, the earnest promoters of Seoul wouldnt have guessed that so much of the world would get its first impression of the city from, essentially, a joke. Before the 21st century, Seoul had no global image to speak of, and only when it suddenly got one did it become clear that nobody quite knew how best to capitalise on it.

One has never had to look hard to find a harsh critic of the city, and even its defenders have struggled to articulate what they love about it: I.Seoul.Us competition included the even emptier expressions Seoulmate, Seouling, and Surprising Seoul.

If Koreans cant clearly perceive the identity of modern Seoul, the problem must be in large part due to the countrys modernisation process itself, involving an obsessive focus on imitating the west.